To defend my case that Frederick Ashton ought to be acknowledged as one of the major artistic geniuses of the last century, I would adduce three crucial pieces of evidence, garnered from the Royal Ballet’s ‘Ashton Celebrated’ festival at Covent Garden this month.
Oberon and Titania’s love is an open contest between two unyielding wills: it can’t be danced gently
The first is ‘Les Rendezvous’, dating from 1933 and one of his earliest enduring creations. Set in a Victorian park in which some harmless young people meet to flirt and circulate, it provides an object lesson in how to make something supremely but unaffectedly stylish out of a wafer-thin premise. The aim is only to please – there is no undercurrent of melancholy or psychological tension, just a series of lyrical and playful dances evolving out of Auber’s chirpy score, full of ingenious pattern-making, unexpected jokes, subtle inclinations and deviations, twists, turns and pauses, all based in an essentially classical vocabulary and radiating blameless good humour.
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